


For All the Things I Didn't Do

by Fudgyokra



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (And Rebirth), Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Semi-Ambiguous Ending, Time Skips, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 09:13:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13478316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: His father taught him that he should always trust his gut feeling. That wasn’t true, Bruce would argue, because you should trust the logic of the brain above all else. They never actually covered what you were supposed to do when neither one turned out to be right.





	For All the Things I Didn't Do

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know why I’m incapable of writing BruJay without it being depressing. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, this is based on a piece of art by Tumblr user purpleyoostin (/post/167322404037)! End scene comes from Under the Red Hood.

_Hate me for all the things I didn’t do for you._

* * *

 

His father taught him that he should always trust his gut feeling. That wasn’t true, Bruce would argue, because you should trust the logic of the brain above all else. They never actually covered what you were supposed to do when neither one turned out to be right.

Jason was eight years old when they met for the first time.

Bruce came by the orphanage routinely to check on how Dick was doing in his schooling, because the newly-christened teenager was just beginning his training to really fit the mold of what Bruce needed Robin to be, not only for the sake of utility but for the sake of safety.

Today, he signed in at three in the afternoon, an hour after Alfred nagged him awake for just this purpose and well before he had any sort of actual work planned. Dick brightened at his face, but thirteen-year-olds certainly didn’t get excited to see their father-figures, so he made a show of shuffling over with as disinterested a stride as he could muster, with a small, dark-haired boy clinging to his arm all the way.

“Who might this be?” Bruce asked as he knelt and extended a hand.

“Jay, say hi,” Dick said, encouraging the boy forward. “This is that friend I was telling you about.”

“Oh,” the boy said, exhibiting a kind of shy reserve that Bruce’s current sponsored youth had never possessed.

Presently, Dick hoisted the kid onto his hip and grinned a proud, paternal smile. “His name’s Jason. He just got here, and, well…” His expression melted into one more wistful when he regarded Bruce, and he could have guessed his next words, even if Dick hadn’t been talking a mile a minute to beat him to it. “You know, I told him all the stories about that guy roaming around…you know, the _Batman_. Now he doesn’t leave me alone.”

Bruce patted Dick’s shoulder. “Are you trying to suggest something to me?” he asked, already nudging him toward the front desk to sign out for the day. “I’ve already got one of you to sponsor, Dick.”

“Yeah, but I just thought, maybe…” He smiled sweetly up at him, and Bruce could never say no to that.

He wasn’t sure how he ended up with not one but _two_ little boys running rampant around his manor, dragging in dust and “god knows what else,” as Alfred would say, fondly in spite of the vein in his forehead looking poised to burst at any moment.

When Dick’s nightly training came to a head and Bruce had corralled both boys into the car to head back to the orphanage, Jason hit him with what must have been the first words he’d ever actually spoken to him directly. “I like your house,” he said simply, from where he rested against Dick’s shoulder. “Way bigger than Mom’s was.”

Dick rested his chin atop Jason’s head and murmured something to him that must have been reassuring, but all Bruce could hear was the resulting grunt, and that was when they pulled up to the red brick domicile that Dick and Jason called home.

//

It took a full two years for their comfortable daily routine to go haywire.

Bruce knew it was an eventuality that Dick would ask to go on patrol with him, yet it didn’t make him any better at handling the situation.

“You do go on patrol,” he told him, only to be faced with a petulant frown, a poised cock of the hip, and a perfectly teenage frown of displeasure.

“I mean for real,” Dick argued, as expected. “The _all_ -night shift.”

Bruce wanted to say that it was too dangerous, but he remembered what it was like to have stubborn resolve like that, and, in the end, he caved. Letting Robin prowl the night alongside the Batman, past curfew and through the usual dredges of typical street crime, all the way into the seedier, darker layers of grime that Gotham had to offer was a new experience for all involved. He took it like a champ, but Bruce always felt a sense of wrongness weighing heavy in his head. Worse still, Jason was being left alone with Alfred at the manor, and he took notice awfully quickly despite the plethora of distracting toys he used to occupy his time. Without Dick there to lull him to sleep, it was practically impossible to keep him quiet.

And so, with an even more somber resignation to what he was asking of these boys, Bruce showed Jason the Batcave for the first time. As he made him promise, the secret was one well-guarded. He still wasn’t sure he liked the way Jason snuck around with spider-like grace, though, making his way around the paths with a decided ease that even Dick had taken a little while to master.

The night Bruce really began to see the error of his judgement hit him like a punch to the gut, when a trek down to the cave—alone, as the storm outside was brutal and Dick was taking a well-deserved nap with the comfort of the white noise to keep him down—made him realize that Jason had somehow already figured out how to get down by himself and was now tumbling about in Dick’s first costume, with dust in his hair and dirty, scraped knees to show how long he’d been at it.

“Jason,” Bruce snapped, voice harsh.

The boy whipped his head up and looked at him with wide, guilty eyes. Then, after a moment of deliberation, he asked what Bruce himself might have, if he’d been in Jason’s shoes. “If Dick can do it, why can’t I?”

There wasn’t really any arguing with that.

With the advancement of Dick’s training and the (careful, slow, reluctant) beginning of Jason’s, Bruce always had a lot on his mind. Was it wrong to let them do this? Was it a mistake to have sponsored them in the first place? His first answer, the one closest to his heart, was that he never regretted sponsoring them, but if he did _that_ , then there was never a choice about it progressing into their current situation. Bruce and Batman simply weren’t separable people, and no amount of colluding with the processes of “normal” life was going to change that.

It didn’t even overly worry him when Dick took his first hit. It was a strong kick to the side that wedged him against a wall and knocked him breathless, but he was back on his feet in a moment, anyway, and never complained a bit. Perhaps they were both becoming sorely resigned to their crime-fighting fates in a way that couldn’t possibly be healthy. Alfred was starting to ask questions more often now.

The real problem wasn’t Dick, though. Bruce suspected Alfred knew that.

His gut instinct, which he tried his best to humor at his late father’s discretion, told him that Jason did not like him very much. He was nervous around him, shifty, quiet, and oh-so questioning. Never let him get away without asking a million things, yet he never looked satisfied with the answers Bruce gave, even when they were true.

In his sounder mind, he reminded himself that Jason was only a child, and an orphaned one at that; it made sense for him to be guarded.

The first true moment of terror struck him while Dick was showering off the night’s pollutants, and Bruce and Jason occupied the cave in silence. It wasn’t tense, but Bruce didn’t suspect that Jason would break it like he did.

“Bruce,” he started, regarding him with a funny look on his face. Even though they were in the safety of the cave and halfway out of costume to boot, hearing his real name spoken so casually at this time of night gave him a brief start.

“Yes, Jason?” he asked, setting the cowl aside and moving to unlatch his cape.

Jason smiled at him, all teeth, and his eyes were alight with mischief in such a way that Bruce had to smile back. And then— “When I’m older, do you think you’ll marry me?”

It hadn’t been quiet in Bruce’s head for a long time, but that was enough to send every tangled-up thought to static. He could hear the bats chirping, could hear his heart beating for the first time in a long time.

“Marry you?” he said with an uneasy laugh. “Jason, that’s a silly question.” He ruffled his hair, gave him a polite, reserved smile, and turned his face to the sound of the water shutting off. “Your turn,” he said, directing him up the steps. That was the end of that.

//

It was as fulfilling as it was difficult to watch Dick pack his things— _his_ things, the ones Bruce had gifted him over the years—into a suitcase and prepare to venture out on his own.

Blüdhaven was dangerous, as volatile as Gotham, so it was tough to agree to the trip, since it had been Dick’s dream ever since he was fifteen. He was fresh into adulthood, newly-anointed with the responsibility of protecting a city, but the way he looked now, tall and broad, with that still-childish grin on his face to light it up in all its vigor… It took Bruce everything he had to maintain composure at the loss. He wasn’t an emotional man, at least not like this, but this was _Dick_ : his first, his prodigy. Still, he knew that Nightwing would go on to do things even Batman could not.

From where he leaned against the far wall, Jason regarded him with a frown. “Do I finally get to start training for real now?” he asked, apparently unamused with the situation and Bruce’s endeared expression both.

“Yes,” he answered, barely taking his eyes away from Dick’s fast-receding form, as he carried the suitcase around the corner and down the stairs to the car that awaited him below. When he looked back, Jason appeared less than nostalgic. He seemed surly, really, but Bruce couldn’t put a finger on why. Logically, it made sense that Jason would be upset at the prospect of Dick leaving, so he chalked it up to that and rested an assuring hand on his shoulder.

Jason swiveled his head to look at him. He seemed pleased by the attention, and on his lips, there was a thin, appeased smile.

“I know you’ll miss him too,” Bruce said, and Jason’s eyes fell half-lidded for just a second before they lowered to the floor to watch his own feet shuffle against the wood.

“I will,” he admitted, then doctored his response by offering a snort. “But it’s not like he’s gone forever. He can visit.”

“Once you find a city that’s truly yours, though…” Bruce sighed in what must have translated to Jason as reverent, because he pulled away and took a few steps toward the stairs with arms crossed.

“I don’t know,” he said meaningfully, “I would think for a city to be yours, you’d have to have someone there you cared about.”

“He’ll be back,” Bruce assured, and Jason left to bid Dick goodbye at the front of the house.

It wasn’t until Dick’s arms were wound tightly around Jason’s shoulders that he realized he _was_ going to miss him terribly. After all, he’d brought him here. He’d given him a fighting chance at having a good life, and a noble one at that. The final farewell was hard, but he took it better than Bruce, who was hardly able to let him go.

Perhaps, Jason wondered, the bond between Batman and Robin was stronger than either of them had let on. In that case, he would have to be a better Robin—a better fighter, a more agile one, with a sharper mind. He reasoned that, despite Dick’s admittedly impressive skill, he could do it. It was just a matter of proving himself…and of time. Always a matter of time.

//

Jason made it through the next training session with only one mistake, but it was enough for Bruce to correct him in the high-and-mighty way he used when he was in Batman mode: Grim, serious. “You must have the right stance,” he snapped, and Jason knew by now not to take it personally. “If you keep doing it that way, you could get swept off your feet.”

Pointedly, he knocked Jason off balance, watching with a smirk as he hit the floor. That didn’t stop Jason from smirking right back, and then he said, “Hey, this isn’t the first time you’ve swept me off my feet.”

“Other than that,” Bruce said, tone tight, “you did a good job.”

“Yeah? You’re not so bad yourself,” he joked.

Bruce had laughed, and that meant the world to him.

Days passed, and with each one he improved in skill. He knew it was wrong to boast, but when Bruce gave him _that_ smile, however small, he couldn’t help but show off during patrol. He succeeded in knocking the enemy down, anyway, so he didn’t see the problem.

It wasn’t until they were both securely tucked away in the safety of the cave that Bruce brought it up. “Don’t get cocky,” he instructed, his voice coming without the grit of the cowl. Jason looked at him, watched him set the mask down and reach for his cape, always the methodical task-master. Some things never changed.

“Why not? You gotta admit, I looked pretty good out there.”

“You did,” Bruce agreed.

Jason pushed the envelope. “Better than Dick did at my age?”

“Almost,” said Bruce.

He pouted. “I think it’s because I need a new costume. This one’s getting kind of small.”

“Small?” Bruce, as anticipated, looked him up and down and then hummed. “You’re right. I’ll have Lucius fix something for you. You’re growing a little faster than Dick,” he observed, and Jason rolled his eyes.

“You don’t _always_ have to compare us,” he said, perhaps with a little more bitterness than intended. “I’m not like Dick, okay?”

“I’m not saying you are.”

There was a brief patch of silence, during which Jason outwardly brightened at a thought. Though there wasn’t pressure on him to share, the glittering of his eyes said without room for error that he was more than willing. “You know what I’m gonna do that Dick never could?”

“What might that be?”

“I’m going to defeat The Joker,” he said, licking his lips and leaning into Bruce’s personal space. “Then you’ll love me more, right?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Bruce said. “I don’t love either of you more than the other.”

“All right,” Jason assented, “then how about this: If I beat Joker at his own game—get him put away, maybe for good— _then_ you marry me.”

Bruce was still for a frighteningly long time. He did eventually look at him, but the expression was guarded and therefore utterly unreadable. “What are you talking about?” he asked, finally, with a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Jason didn’t back down; contrarily, he crossed his arms (might have flexed them for posterity), and cocked his hip, shifting his weight onto one broad leg and grinning haughtily up at him. “I’m almost sixteen. I can totally get married with a guardian’s consent.”

“Yes, _mine_ ,” Bruce said, making his way to the computer without looking at him.

“That’s the idea,” he teased.

“I mean that—” Whatever he’d been about to say, he apparently thought better of it and sighed instead. “Get ready to go, Jason. I have too much work to listen to you crack wise all night.”

So, he thought it was a joke. Jason could accept that. “God, you’re gonna be the death of me. I don’t see why you don’t just let me sleep here tonight.”

“I’m not technically supposed to have you past midnight,” he said.

“You used to let Dick stay here sometimes. You _know_ they don’t care at that place.”

“I care,” he said, with a kind of finality that took any further arguments off the table.

“Fine,” Jason repeated, and this time he did as he was told and disappeared into the upper story with maybe a more rigid silence than he’d meant, because Alfred stopped him dead in his tracks on the way into his temporary room to ask what the matter was. He offered a short, “Nothing, Al,” and waved the man off. He got the picture that the man didn’t like him very much, anyway. Probably, he liked Dick better. Everyone else seemed to.

//

Jason thought he was acting ahead of the curve when he snuck off to find Joker on his own, but obviously something had gone wrong in the universe. Maybe the stars weren’t aligned, or whatever it might have been, but he didn’t think he was going to end up like this when he’d set foot in the place, armed to the teeth and yet so vulnerable.

No guns, said the Bat. Well, Joker had guns. He did not use them that night.

Jason felt a rush of _cold_ first thing, like an ice block against his temple, before the pain registered. His chest tightened in a panic under the ropes binding him, but Joker only laughed, laughed and laughed like a cawing vulture as he kept whacking, hard metal against soft, pale skin.

He could taste blood and iron, rust and bone, and yet he couldn’t help but grin at the inefficiency. “Did anyone ever tell you,” he started, breathing heavily against the grimy floor on which he lay, “that you hit like a girl?”

“A girl?” Joker asked, voice high and light. “Did you want me to bring Harley in here to make sure?”

Jason made a _tch_ noise through his teeth, ignoring the burning in his jaw, his throat, his head. Everywhere, the lesions burned and dragged against the tile while he struggled, but he had it in his head that Bruce would be there any minute. Any minute to break him free.

The thing about hope, though, is that it was a bitch. You could quote him on that—he’d copyright the phrase if he could. Might even get it tattooed on his shoulder or something one day.

Batman buzzed into his communicator in a panic. It was the most emotion he’d heard from him since they’d met. Fear was a strong motivator. “Robin,” his voice crackled, desperate and windblown. “Are you all right? I’m on my way. I’m on my—”

The already-bloodied end of the crowbar hit him sharply on the ear, busting the speaker and everything attached to it. Let it break, he thought grimly. He was halfway to the wolves already and he knew it. Bruce was still driving, if the wind indicated anything, and that meant there was no way he was making it out of here alive.

Despite the damage, Bruce’s voice still managed to eke through the little speaker. “Robin, come in—”

“Guess I should’ve mentioned,” he huffed, grimacing at the spray of blood he choked out across the floor, “I was going out alone.”

“It’s okay, it’s fine. Don’t worry, I—”

Joker was taking steps away, and for a glimmer of a moment, Jason thought that might be his chance to escape. It took everything in him to maneuver his roped arms to the front of his body, but then he heard the ticking, and all he could do was sit, slumped and battered against the wall, and speak dying breaths into the communicator.

“Bat,” he said, voice gritty, “did I do better than Dick?”

“Jason,” he said, serious. His name. _His_ name. “You were better than Dick from the start. You had a natural talent and it was…it was more than—”

“Love you, old man,” he said, managing a laugh despite himself. The ticking had stopped, and that was the end. The End, capital t, capital e.

He thought he might have lived long enough to see the silhouette of Batman through the explosion, but then again that might have been a post-mortem daydream, or something equally as bleak. At any rate, he’d been right about one thing: Whether he’d meant it literally or not, Bruce Wayne turned out to be the death of him after all.

//

Bruce recalled Dick’s face more than anything else from the funeral. From the stormy gray of the Gotham sky to the stone gray of the headstone, there wasn’t much else that stood out.

It had been a couple of years since then, of course, but then again Dick always looked the same.

The worst part was admitting to himself that he didn’t miss him half as much as he used to. He thought that the further away Dick remained, the better off he would be. The better chance he had of escaping a fate like Jason’s.

Naturally, as Bruce had raised him to be (in his likeness, Alfred would say), Dick was stubborn and chose to stay in Gotham for the rest of the month while Bruce slowly but surely recovered. _Recovered_ might not have been the right word, but he was stable at the very least.

And then along came Tim Drake, wide-eyed and abandoned. Bruce wanted more than anything to stop the procession of time, to take back what had happened to the boy’s parents, halfway out of pity and halfway out of a selfish desire to keep him away. He couldn’t do it again, he told himself. Couldn’t risk it. But then, he cradled Tim in his arms and the boy clung to him like a vice, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to let go.

Sometimes he felt like Tim was only there to make up for Jason, but Bruce remembered his logic, remembered even his gut sense of security and admiration, and finally came to his senses. For the first time in three years, he began to remember what it was like to feel happy. To feel proud.

Tim might not have been as broad-shouldered as Dick or Jason, not as fast and not as savvy with weapons, but he was _smart_ and he learned quickly. In a way, he reminded Bruce much more of himself than either protege before him.

It took him a while to register that the smile on his face was actually there, and even longer to realize it was genuine down to the heart. He was looking upon the results of Tim’s target practice (perfect, with excellent technique) when Alfred pointed it out with a watery voice, like he couldn’t have been happier to see Bruce smile again, which he supposed was the truth.

As it tended to do, the good life came to a hurtling stop not long after.

//

“Robin, come in.”

Silence.

“Robin,” Bruce tried again, peering out into the night for any sign of the boy and coming up empty. “Come in.”

“I’m here,” Tim’s voice answered at last, but the relief was short-lived. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Details.” As he urged, he was already pulling up Tim’s GPS location on his watch and dropping to the ground below to begin pursuit.

“You remember the news about the Red Hood coming back to Gotham?”

He remembered, all right. When the name first processed in his brain, he thought for a mere flicker of a second that he might have died and gone to hell. But no, Red Hood was very real, and he was here again. Couldn’t have been the same man, of course, but the visage was back in business, and whoever it was that had assumed the identity was more than living up to his predecessor’s fame, if the rumors were to be believed. Since they’d been correct thus far, Bruce wasn’t keen on debunking any just yet.

“Yes, I remember. Have you found him?”

“Um, yeah,” Tim said. Somehow, his voice sounded all wrong. “I found him. Well, he found me.”

“Are you in danger?” Bruce asked, revving the motorcycle as he went, hoping fruitlessly that the mechanical lion’s roar could carry as far as Tim’s position, and ward off the hungry criminal to boot.

“Yes.” Tim answered carefully, as if he’d been checking for an answer from Hood himself. “I am.”

“He’d better hurry,” another voice, tinny and cold, arose from the background. Something about it was cruel, hateful, familiar. “Wouldn’t want to get here too late. Things might go boom and then you’ve got a dead bird on your hands.”

Bruce’s blood turned to ice, but before he could say anything, Tim’s voice was back in his ear, sounding as strange as before. “Batman,” he said, “that wasn’t the problem I was calling about.”

No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t and Bruce knew it.

“I’m almost there,” he said. “I won’t be late. Not this time.”

//

Tim didn’t look scared so much as he did uncomfortable, like how one might look at a party where they didn’t know anybody. He wasn’t restrained, but the moment Bruce dropped in, there was a gloved hand around his wrist, jerking him closer to the brawny likeness of the Red Hood.

“Jason,” Bruce said, before he could stop himself. “But how?”

“No idea, hot stuff,” Jason replied, aiming the gun in his free hand at him, point blank. “What, aren’t you glad to see me?”

Tim remained stiff at Jason’s side, even after he’d let go and lowered the gun so he could approach Bruce instead. “Give me one reason why I don’t blow his head off right now,” he told him, a threat filled with so much poison that Bruce didn’t dare try and call his bluff.

The actual hood laid on the floor some feet away, meaning all Bruce could look at was Jason’s face, pale and freckled as always but no longer gaunt, no longer soft with the dredges of childhood. There was a sweep of white across the front of his hair, and his eyes were poisonous. He was Bruce’s size now, hulking and full of strength he wasn’t afraid to use.

He smiled, but it held no fondness. “Better hurry, Batman,” he said. “Or don’t.” He took a step back, smoothed a hand across Tim’s hair and watched him sneer. “I think this place would look good painted red.”

“He’s just a kid,” Bruce answered, unwilling to lower his gaze from that face.

“Yeah?” Jason asked, as though he were considering. He let Tim go, took a calculated step away, and swiped his hood from the ground to put it back on. After a considerable silence, he said, “So was I.” And with that, he leapt off the balcony, sending Tim darting to the spot he’d previously occupied and Bruce coming in close behind.

They followed him on foot for a good distance, through alleyways and past seedy corners, nondescript motels and drug dens—all the worst Gotham had to offer. In the end, they couldn’t keep up. When they lost him, it took every ounce of willpower Bruce had to make his next decision.

“Robin,” he said, “go home. I’ll take care of this one on my own.”

“Are you crazy?” Tim snorted. “How are you even going to—”

Answering a question he hadn’t yet been asked, Bruce held up a small, remote-like device. At its hilt, it blinked with a steady red light, and in the center, there was a GPS map, colored a saturated green with a black dot moving in the margins.

He would have demanded again that Tim leave if he thought for a second that he’d listen. Instead, he lifted his grapple gun skyward and engaged it, ignoring the alarmed cry from beneath him as he swept through the blanket of night, alone.

//

“I told you I’d get farther than Dick ever did.”

Bruce had known it was going to be harder than just walking inside and talking things out, but he hadn’t expected Jason to approach him the way he did, with the Joker rope-bound and in his grasp. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine that Jason knew about the tracker and had led him here on purpose.

The clown smiled as though nothing was the matter and greeted him as he normally would, with an insincere bite of humor. “Oh, Batman! Fancy meeting you here.”

Bruce swallowed hard. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good. “Hood,” he started carefully, “put Joker down.”

“Nice try, but you don’t get to come into my house and boss me around.” Jason yanked Joker backward, sending his entire body toppling back to land, clumsily, on a wooden dining chair a foot away. “I want to know why you let him live.”

Bruce was certain his stare answered well enough, but that didn’t seem to be the case. “No, really,” Jason said, “I want to hear it. By keeping him alive, you let hundreds if not thousands of innocent people die. You…you let _this_ happen to me.” The words stung, as loaded with vitriol as they were, but they still garnered no answer. Finally, Jason gave up and interjected a rough, humorless laugh into the silent space.

“Isn’t he charming!” Joker exclaimed. Jason kicked him hard in the leg and drew out a shout of pain.

“You want to make this right?” Jason asked. He looked first at Bruce, then at Joker. “Then you choose. Him or me?”

“Choose?” Bruce knew he’d spoken, but he didn’t feel as though his mouth had moved. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, who bites the bullet? There’s no way out of this one, Batman. I want you to pick your favorite, show me where your priorities lie.”

“Jason—”

“ _Don’t_. Don’t you dare ‘Jason’ me.” He tilted the muzzle of the gun upward, reached up, and pulled the domino mask away from his face to look Bruce in the eyes. The memories flashed in his head (a kid, grinning, with bandages wrapped around bleeding fingers and his Robin mask askew) faster than the crack of a whip. It physically hurt to recognize those eyes in a different face, so sunken and angry now.

“Jason,” he insisted, inching his feet across the floor bit by bit as if he could somehow sneak his way in close. “Don’t do this.”

“You can’t do it,” Jason said with a hard scoff. “Okay. All right, well, you know what?” With a grim smile, he waved the weapon around in the air a bit with a flourish, and then leaned his head against Joker’s temple with the gun on the other side. “How about I kill us both?”

Joker only laughed, like a manic creature, and said, “Aren’t you going to save me?” he asked, in a vicious mockery of the situation. “We’ve been through so much together. Surely you wouldn’t just let me die…”

“Or,” Jason said, thoughtfully, standing again. Bruce found himself on the end of the barrel this time, and Jason looked perfectly serene, without expression. “I kill you, and then I kill him. You two can have plots next to each other. A nice couple’s funeral with matching caskets. My treat.”

Bruce felt like the breath had been kicked out of him. “I can’t let you,” he said, slowly.

“You don’t have a choice.” In a flash of movement, Jason had thrown something right into his hands, and what he found, clasped to his chest and cradled in his palms, was another gun, shiny and silver and cold. “I’m gonna blow his deranged brains out, and if you wanna stop me, you’re gonna have to shoot me first.”

Jason lifted Joker by the collar with only one hand, advertising a kind of strength Bruce knew better than to doubt.

After a moment of deliberation and a serious stare, he threw the gun to the ground and turned his back, taking the necessary steps to leave until Jason’s shuddering breaths warned him in advance to draw up his defenses.

It all seemed to happen in one instant; Bruce heard the gun, felt the weight of the batarang in his palm, and then launched it into the barrel, where it exploded back against Jason’s hand with a bang that had as much emotional impact in Bruce’s chest as Jason’s resulting cry. Joker was laughing on the ground, pawing his way closer to the Bat’s feet, and with an evil glint in his eye, he said, “You did it! You found a way to win the game, and everybody _still_ loses!”

The laughter was repugnant. Jason shakily removed a detonator from his pocket and hit the trigger, sending Bruce’s eyes to the beeping assemblage of bombs to his left, just behind a raggedy curtain that concealed the nook.

If Joker had had his way, their next scuffle would’ve been the end of it all. He tackled him to the ground with guffaws and assertions of certain death—they could all die together! And didn’t he just _love_ happy endings? But Bruce couldn’t take that, couldn’t allow it. He shoved the man off, got a handful of cloth covering Jason’s shoulder, and dove to safety with him in tow.

When the corner of the building collapsed, what Bruce stood in could no longer be qualified as a room. It was a gaping wound on the face of the condominium, with smoke billowing and rubble strewn about. Close by, he heard a weak laugh. There was a tiny bloom of hope in his chest for only a second before fate snubbed him again, and his hands cleared the rubble around Joker’s trapped hands.

It was all he could do now: Bend down and clear the bricks away to let the Joker free yet again, with Jason nowhere in sight, and yet still very much in mind.

His gut said to follow him, wherever he’d run off to. His brain said to leave him be, let him hash out his emotions his own way. Both choices had their own consequences.

In the end, he stayed in the manor after returning Joker to Arkham, and it was Alfred who finally lent him some much-needed clarity. “Master Wayne,” he said, gently, watching him from afar as he kept his own gaze trained on Jason’s suit, tucked neatly behind a glass display case. “Should I…remove that?”

“Should you?”

“What does your heart tell you, Bruce?”

He looked at the suit, across every little stitch as if committing it to memory more than he already had was even possible. Finally, he turned back to Alfred, slid on the cowl, and answered with a definitive, “No, leave it.” He took long strides to the Batmobile, smoothed a hand over the top, and added, “What happened doesn’t change anything. Nothing at all.”


End file.
